


so take your true loves down to the river

by wherethewhiled



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Family Feels, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 13:38:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1471792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wherethewhiled/pseuds/wherethewhiled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>an odd little story about how it’s supposed to be painful but quick, except this wasn’t a band-aid, it was a life his moms were ripping off.</p><p>started as something to get me putting down words again, but Henry is crazy hard to write, so kind of a mess, because logistics, but hey, no problem.  it's about families, break-ups, and surprises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so take your true loves down to the river

_— a meditation on the point of a triangle looking on its opposite bond —_

 

Maybe he’s talking with a mouthful of molasses, or maybe he’s dreaming.

The soft vibrations bouncing off his lips make him frown however, while he sounds out the question “like, not a couple?” and shit, it’s one hundred percent totally real.

He tips forward, ear drums straining for the comma, the but that will explain it all better, because it can’t.  Not on something as generic as  _honey, we are no longer going to be together._

But the room is quiet, like it’s just another one of those evenings they spend sometimes, each curled up in their own spots, each reading their own books or papers or comics.  Being together,  _because it matters._

Henry jerks his head to the right, mouth open like an idiot, staring down Emma’s sorry eyes when suddenly the way his moms are sitting apart for this talk hits him like three hundred volts, the hospital paddles cold against his skin, trying to jump-start his body, wake him up to the reality that his moms are officially over now.  

“But why,” he asks, and his throat swells up painfully, “why are you breaking up?”

He needs a reason.  He can fix it if there’s a reason.  It’s what he does around the house.

His Mom looks so small in her favourite armchair, hunched in, her arms glued to her ribs, her hands in her lap holding to each other.  He watches her swallow and swallow in between bits of breathing, and his whole right side twitches, worried she’s going to make herself pass out like that.  Emma’s hand claps on his knee, resigned and pinning him to the seat beside her.

He doesn’t know how to stop all the noise and anger that blusters in his lungs then as he looks at that fourth finger, taking in the bare knuckle like he does on the sly sometimes, asking himself again and again —  _what makes a family stick?_

“What the hell?  You both promised this wasn’t gonna happen!”  His Mom flinches.  He doesn’t mean to spit or throw a tantrum but he’s feeling totally duped.  “Is it Gram and Gramps?  Mom, we don’t have to listen to them.  I mean, why now, right?”  

He chokes a bit on his lame-ass laughter, busted up and sad.  Henry has never known his moms to cower or shut up about anything.  Now, here they are counting specks on the floor.

“Will somebody please explain to me?  Everything was fine.”  He’s also so used them lying a little to protect him, both the important ones and the everyday ones, he’s picked it up, the habit, and well.  It hasn’t been fine lately, he knows.  “Please, talk to me.”

“It’s too hard, Henry,” his Mom croaks, so very softly.

“What’s too hard?”  He snatches on the poor excuse unspooling like a fishing line, a lifeline, thin and translucent in the air.  “Being here, being together? — you guys are true love, I know you are.”  

“We weren’t supposed to fall in love.”  Looking up finally, his Mom is near tears and frustrated as hell, and he knows, immediately, something isn’t adding up.  “Heroes don’t end up with villains.”

“Then let’s go,” he splutters back and his heart is punching through his ribs, hitting up against the soft tissues of his chest.  The off-beating is making it so hard to be logical.  Still, he scrambles for a solution.  “We can — we can get out of here, then we’ll just be people, right? — no good guys and bad guys in the real world.”

Emma scoffs tiredly and sniffles.  “Yes, there are, kid.”

“But we can be together!”  He jumps down her throat, bouncing petulantly on the distressed leather.  “I don’t care about living in some stupid fairy tale anymore, I don’t care, okay?  I’m fifteen.  I get it.  That stuff isn’t real.”  

They both simply shake their heads, and in tandem.  He doesn’t understand.  His moms and him, it’s obvious, it fits.  He sees so much of each of them in each other.

“I’m sorry, kid.”

Frantic, he blows up, bright hot and red.  “No!  You’re not!  You’re not breaking up!”

It’s so harsh it scares the crap out of his moms, startling emotions loose and making them all openly cry, and cry, the heavily pouring tears carrying them away.  Slouching over, he cringes into his lap, several warm salty drops splashing blue denim.  

“Regina.”

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” she sobs, and his Mom squeezes her eyes, hand cupped over her mouth, before standing and turning from them.  Her other hand spreads across her stomach.  “This is where you belong.  You have people here.  You’re the Saviour.”

“I didn’t ask for any of that, but I am asking for this, right now,” Emma argues, finally, with her heated, over-pronouncing and her big hand gestures.

Henry roughly wipes his forearm across his cheeks and under his nose and wrecks the sleeve of the shirt Emma just gave him for his birthday.  His Mom won’t be happy about that.

“It’s all wrong, we were wrong,  _this_  is what we should be doing, Regina.”

Like she’s hoping to hold it in, from beating right out of her, his Mom covers her heart with her right hand as she pivots back around to them and like that —  _he knew it_  — they’re seeing each other again, his two moms, plainly picking up some ongoing conversation they’ve been having for weeks in that speechless way they have, and he tries so hard to tune in to their frenetic back and forth.

“Henry,” Emma says, without taking her eyes off his Mom, “go pack your bags,”

His throat is clogged and he wipes his nose again.  “What?”

“Your mom’s already packed up.  She’s ready to go.  I just need some clothes.”

Henry pushes himself up off the sofa with shaky arms.  “You were gonna leave?”  But the regretful lines around his Mom’s eyes make his stomach churn, the briny sea in him drowning both lungs in the hard realization that clocks move in town these days and life isn’t forever like it used to feel like.  

 _The big picture_ , he thinks.  His Mom, who doesn’t ever leave him, he reminds himself.

“Mom, you better not be gone when I get back down here.”

He sprints upstairs, feet loud all the way to his room.  He throws a couple duffle bags on his bed and starts emptying his drawers.  Scrambling around, he trips on books and dirty jeans.  He wants to take so many things with him, things he grew up having, things he’s gotten accustomed to, things that are his, that mean something, hold memories of easier days.  There really isn’t time though because his lungs are fit to burst and he mostly believes his moms, but they don’t have a very good track record.  He skips putting on socks and ineptly pulls and pulls on a pair of sneakers, hands trembling as he stuffs the laces in.

Hurrying back out, bags clumsily swinging by his sides, he knocks into a dresser and something breaks behind him.  He keeps going, telling himself over and over that it isn’t his  _For Mommy_  plaster imprint of his hand.

Barreling down the grand staircase, he doesn’t hear talking, and his heart full on stops.  Panic drumming in his ears, he hurls himself forward — the bottom steps, the foyer — skidding to a halt in the doorway of the study and stumbling in.

They’re making-out, holding on to each other so close.  

His Mom pulls away first and looks right at him, a bit embarrassed, but really, mostly pleading for what is happening to be true, that they are finally choosing her once and for all, completely and unreservedly.  Her chest is heaving just like his.  He nods.

“Go,” she says then, hastily disentangling herself from Emma’s arms, pushing at her to go get her things.

“Kid, help your mom get everything in the car.  We’re taking the Benz.  More room,” she shouts, halfway up already.

He isn’t sure why they are doing it like this, slapdash and like their family is on the run; it makes his mouth dry.  His moms aren’t telling him something.

He would’ve like to have said goodbye, to people and places.

It’s cold out, their every breath out ghostlike before them.  He slams the trunk, clambers into the backseat and clicks in his seat belt.  His Mom stays waiting by the driver’s side door, fingers pressing on the glass for support.  By the time Emma jogs over, his Mom is shivering, but then they’re talking, faces tight and serious again, lips moving urgently.

“No,” he hollers, banging his fist on the window because no fucking way he’s giving them a quiet moment to have second thoughts about what’s best.  “Let’s go!”

For once, they actually listen from the get go.  Emma passes him her one bag, stomps on the gas a little too hard.  His Mom braces herself with a hand on the glove box.

Barely a few miles passed the town line, Henry leans forward into the space between front seats, and says, “I love you both, okay?  My moms and me,” and settles back again, sagging into the comfortable leather, though he keeps his eyes on the dotted lines on the road ahead of them steadily disappearing under the car.  

 

—

 

"Emma, Emma, pull over."

He doesn’t remember falling asleep.  He can hear his moms talking, the tires rolling over gravel, the smack of car doors punctuating the slow and garbled song on the radio, but all he can see is a kind of faded black like an old t-shirt as he begs himself to wake up before it’s too late.  

On a big breath in, he jolts up out of bleary semi-consciousness, sore from how hard his heart is beating on him.  Eyes sticky with sleep, he rubs a fist over them as he scrambles to the front passenger seat, body tight and terrified and tugs the door open.  

Just as quick his shoulders slump in relief seeing their slight frames huddled together on the side of the road, a significant distance out front, the forced perspective of the endless stretch ahead of them making his moms look so meager.  He treads toward them carefully.

The high beams from the car shoot out past them on the left, harsh in the darkened blue.

Emma watches him approach, eventually, and when he’s near she offers a soft “hey.”

“Is something wrong, woke up and you guys were gone,” Henry says, the slight wind whipping that much deepened voice around.

“No, no, we’re okay,” Emma says, and smiles, watery tracks on her cheeks.  “Your mom just needed a minute.”

Both arms are enclosed protectively around her while his Mom has hers looped around Emma’s neck, hanging on to her so vulnerably.  Head down, tucked against the other side of Emma’s face, his Mom’s also pulling in oxygen through her nose like the night sky is spinning and she’s out of control, and shit, it scares him that he doesn’t know what to make of it.

He puts a dent in his lower lip, running through worst case scenarios.  ”Was she sick?”

"I was driving too fast.  Just needed some air."

“I’m okay, honey.”  His Mom lifts up, opening her eyes, making her whole face accessible to him, and Emma tenderly tucks back some of the damp hair stuck to her cheek.

He grimaces, hesitant about how intrusive he wants to be.  “Okay, so then, why are we crying?”

Emma sighs loudly and her features loosen.  “Totally happy tears, kid.  You see, we’re um …”  Her boots shuffle on the gravel, kick up puffs of dust into the high beams.

“Tell him,” his Mom says, laughing a little; totally tired, but laughing.

“We’re having a baby?”

His brain fumbles the pass.  ”What like you and Mom?”

"Yeah," she chuckles out.  "We’ve been trying for a while, kind of a long while now, and well, your mom’s pregnant so —"

"Hold on, and you were just gonna let Mom leave?"

"Emma didn’t know, honey," his Mom interjects, "I just told her."

It has to be complicated, of course, like scribbles that don’t seem to make up much but are some kind of art that’s supposed to mean something.  His moms can be so frustrating, and not like algebra scrunching his forehead doesn’t help make better sense of it either.  

"What is going on?”  He huffs as Emma stops herself from saying whatever, looking to his Mom.  “Seriously, like — first you’re breaking up, and now you’re telling me — is that why — wait, did you —"

"No, it’s not like that, the baby’s —"

"Emma, maybe we shouldn’t."

Eyes heavy with emotion, Emma takes him in squarely for a long honest beat and in that time an important lesson forms: she’s afraid she will pass on whatever bad she’s lived like a cold and make him sick, make him the way she is or worse, that’s why she does that.  And if that isn’t what his Mom must’ve been afraid of too for his entire life.  

But he doesn’t know how to make the right words to tell them it isn’t like that, to let him hold them up once in a while, pass back the caring.  So, he simply thinks about love, how much he needs them, the whole of them, and hopes against hope that it will reach their speechless place.

Gradually, his Mom blinks her way to a bright smile, then the fingers from her left are travelling along Emma’s burgundy sleeve to be with the stiff fingers holding to her own leather jacket by her hip, and it seems to really steady Emma like nothing else.

"No, let’s talk about it.  Henry’s right,” she says and her ponytail bounces as she nods and reaches for him.  He takes hold of her hand, hunches up close, his tall frame blocking some of the cold.  “We are what matter.  I don’t owe them anything."

With a high sling of her arm around his big shoulders, Emma’s gives him the skimmed over explanation and promises of the detailed version when settled in somewhere with food and a bed.

“Plus the town never liked us getting together — not that their opinion matters — but the looks, the comments, Mary Margaret and David pressuring me … still, we wanted to try, and we messed around with some spells, which we shouldn’t have, and when we were together our magic was causing problems, like accidents and stuff.  But we were just so focused on doing this one thing that … I don’t know, maybe I was trying to prove our love was truer than theirs, or something.”  Emma mumbles that last bit into their cluster of shoes and shrugs, but he knows way better.

“Okay.  So, that’s disgusting,” he comments, making a face.  “Those downed power lines were you guys, wasn’t it?”  

“Yeah, actually,” Emma admits after a bout of squirming and their laughter is worth every effort.  Even bringing up them doing it and causing power outages across multiple blocks.

Brushing back his floppy hair, his Mom’s trembling a bit in the brisk air as she adds, “it seemed like the right decision at the time, worried about what the best environment for you was.”

“Mom,” he says in a perfect imitation of her  _think-about-your-choices_  tone, “you thought taking care of a brand new kid out there on your own, without us, was the right thing to do?”

“I found out about the baby after,” she says, sheepishly.

Emma snickers.  “I already scolded her for that, kid.  When did you get so old and knowing?”

“Haven’t you noticed?  He outsmarted your genes long ago.”

There’s an instant weightlessness around his shoulders and sudden sharp motions then as Emma pulls her arm back around and fear and adrenaline are going again, except that it isn’t exactly some new emergency — turns out in the end all that just to brush the tips of her fingers over his Mom’s pinkish chapped cheeks.  Henry flushes, sort of embarrassed.  He tries to hide it as best he can, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking over at the particles dancing in the high beams.

“Still dizzy, or you okay?  Because your teeth are chattering.”  He listens to Emma go a little overboard, fussing, the sound of fabric and friction, to warm up his Mom, he assumes.  “We should get you back in the car.”

He literally has to yank a hand out to wipe the stupid grin off his face — of course it doesn’t really work — before offering to warm up the car first.  Emma tosses him the keys and as he treks back toward their very own getaway vehicle, sneakers crunching the gravel, he chuckles, thinking about how excited his ten-year-old self would’ve been over the adventure of it all.

Peeking around again, Henry sort of walks and watches his moms for a bit, touching foreheads and stealing kisses like eloping teenagers.  They have a whole private world he isn’t a part of; it makes him feel safe though, like he can breathe the whole way out now.  

He does, letting it all out up above him.   To the moon, and the stars, and the sky.

 

—

 

He’s awake again.  Blinking, it takes him a minute to register the numbers above the radio, bright, right in his face: 12:54.  Past the clock, straight out the windshield, he notices the giant neon sign above a building with rows on rows of identical doors and railings — stopped in a motel parking lot.  It doesn’t look like Boston, it isn’t busy around them — he remembers a river at some point — but probably close enough to count, he thinks, and he smirks.  Mission accomplished.

His Mom is asleep in the front, her head lolled a tad to the left, Emma’s jacket covering her.

The arm he has draped over Emma’s duffel is asleep too and he scowls as he drops it to his lap.  He spots her through the driver’s side window then, ambling toward the car, folding some papers over a pamphlet.  Ever so gently, she sticks her key in the lock and slips in behind the steering wheel again, winces when she has to slam the car door a bit.  

When she slowly turns to check on him, Henry shuts his eyes and mimics sleep for her.

Hearing her settle back in her seat, he counts to three, takes a breath, and observes her.  Five years ago, she was all blonde curls, right angles and distant, but the saviour in her red leather jacket.  Now, she’s in a loose checkered shirt, still and reassuring, in a Benz and staring at his Mom.  Emma lifts her hand over to where his Mom’s arm is poking out, hand upturned and plopped behind the gear stick, to hold it; fingers twitch but his Mom is worn out.

So, Emma leans back on her headrest with a careful exhale and relaxes.

Ten hours ago, he was taking the long way home so he could throw stones on the beach for a while because he couldn’t stop thinking  _things aren’t fine, what if his moms split up?_   

He knows more than he ever lets on.  But he hadn’t known this: the happiness of sitting in the car with his parents, after a long-ass day, up past midnight, the late night hush and exhaustion — and a gaudy pink neon splashed all over them.


End file.
